Ten years ago today, English football and Wayne Rooney were waking up with a sense of wellbeing. The previous night, the 18-year-old had made his debut for Manchester United and in Europe. Rooney’s spellbinding performance had caught the attention of the Continent. United had swept aside Fenerbahce

In America, they have a saying: offence wins games, defence wins championships. It’s part of the catechism of sport in the US. In the Premier League, the idea of defending appears to be an afterthought at best and an object of disdain at worst. Manchester United have rarely been as shambolic at

Why would anyone sell a Premier League club right now? And why would anyone spend money on a new stadium? To understand what’s happening at Tottenham Hotspur, these questions need to be answered. This week, there have been reports that Spurs are up for sale. The price? A ludicrous £1 billion.

The most shocking thing to come out of Roy Hodgson’s mouth last week was not an outburst of four-letter words at a press conference. If a manager’s industrial language was a story, the back pages would never be short of headlines. Instead, the England manager’s worst comment last week is that his

Roy Hodgson will not want to be remembered as the man who killed interest in England. He doesn’t deserve that label, either. Yet the 67-year-old appears to be the acceptable face of apathy. How else can the muted public reaction to a frankly disastrous World Cup campaign be explained? Once, the

Watching Harry Redknapp on the sidelines at White Hart Lane yesterday, it felt like an era was coming to a close. There, at the scene of some of his greatest triumphs, the Queens Park Rangers manager sat unable to change the flow of the game as his team were comprehensively dismantled by Tottenham

David Moyes was not the reason Manchester United flopped so badly last season. Louis van Gaal is not the panacea to Old Trafford’s problems. The storm hitting the Stretford End has been brewing for nine years since the Glazer family took over the club in a leveraged buyout. In the run-up to the

The defence for Roy Hodgson seems to come from two angles. The first is based on the assertion that he is a “nice man”. The second is that there is no other viable candidate for the England manager’s job. The apologists at the FA also believe that Hodgson has overseen the emergence of a new

A philosophy died in Rio on Wednesday night and thank God for that. Tiki-taka — one of the ugliest phrases attached to football since Charles Hughes created Pomo (Position Of Maximum Opportunity) — is no more. That should be celebrated. Spain’s downfall brings little pleasure, though. History will

Every time Pelé opens his mouth he tarnishes his legacy. This week has been no different. Once, the Brazilian was routinely referred to as “the greatest player in the game’s history”. The revisionism grows every year, as do the contenders for the title. Lionel Messi is breaking records on an